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The introduction of Long Term Capital Gains (LTCG) on equity was quite a blow to the investors causing a spontaneous reaction to the Sensex. After the proposal reintroduced the LTCG tax, the fears of equity investors came to be true, leading to tumbling of the markets.

Especially, the small investors who shifted their trust from real estate and gold to financial assets, were the ones who got affected.

In the wake of the Budget 2018, a 10% LTCG tax on gains over and above Rs. 1 Lakh. The LTCG on stocks and equity mutual funds was tax-free for a long period of 14 years. Hence, investments in equity mutual funds were a major attraction, especially in the post-demonetisation phase when many funds gave massive returns of about 30-50% in a year.

Below are a few measures in the proposal to avail the benefit of the LTCG as per the following situations:

The new proposal for LTCG policy will only be effective from the 1st of April, 2018. Hence, the LTCG exemption can be claimed, if equity shares of an investor are sold before March 31, 2018.

For all the equity holdings sold after April 1, 2018, LTCG will be exempt from tax only up to Rs.100,000 per annum and as proposed, hence, 10% is chargeable on the long-term gain exceeding Rs.100,000.

One of the most important provision is the grandfathering of gains till January 31, 2018. Gains accrued till January 31, 2018 will not be taxable, hence, reducing the amount of capital gains facing the 10% tax. This has certainly brought relief to the investors.

But, this new rule has raised a lot of questions in the mind of investors. One of them being, are Equity MFs still the best bet?

I believe, for a long-term wealth building, equity mutual funds are still the best path to follow, given their potential to outperform the markets by giving massive returns.

As per the CRISIL AMFI Equity Fund Performance Index for December 2017, equity funds had a CAGR of 35.59% in one year, being one of the best investment vehicles at present.

The impact of LTCG is unlikely on small investors who invest for the short or mid-term through the SIP format.Therefore, a small investor would only pay a small tax only on the non-exempted gains.

The SMART way to reduce your tax liability

There are a few ways to remain under the Rs. 1 lakh limit thereby, lowering your tax incidence. For example, investing in your spouse or child’s name in order to ensure the projected gains remain less than Rs. 1 lakh during redemption.

Check Exit Load & STCG in case of immediate EXIT

If you’ve made a decision to exit your mutual funds, consider these three costs. First, the exit load. For example, many funds charge 1% for redemption within 365 days of investment. Second, check your expense ratio. This would directly reduce your absolute returns. Third and the most important, check the investment tenure. You pay 15% tax on Short Term Capital Gains on equity investments, with a tenure of less than 365 days. All investors can actually wait a little extra instead of paying towards your exit load and five percent more as the STCG, hence reducing your costs.

The Growth Story of INDIA

Indian markets are expected to have great long-term prospects with estimated economic growth projected at 7-8% per annum. The smart strategy of any long-term investor looking for massive returns, should be to not pull out and remain invested. Mutual funds are still the best savings instrument there, and will continue to generate higher long-term returns better than any other asset class. The LTCG introduction should not change the long-term outlook of MF believers and investors.

The initial idea of Equity Mutual Fund investment is long-term wealth building, hence, equity Mutual Funds are still one of the very lucrative investment options from a wealth creation perspective.Therefore, I believe the LTCG is definitely not a deterrent to investment.

Failure of corporate deals has been a recurring problem in the world of mergers and acquisitions. Two companies merge for several reasons such as, expansion of market share, reduction of operating costs and acquisition of new lines of distribution or technology. But this synergy match involves a clash of personalities and priorities and that’s what ends up in failure of such corporate marriages.

Recent news about two big merger/acquisition deals came as a reminder of the failure of such corporate deals. The failed deal between PPG, a massive American chemicals company and its European competitor, Akzo Nobel was the first on the board. The continuous efforts of PPG to buy its rival have been in vain. Akzo’s board of directors have rejected all bids made by PPG in order to independently increase its shareholders’ value.

Another deal between a US satellite technology startup, OneWeb and a satellite manufacturer, Intelsat added to the list of such failures. The deal was backed by Japanese telecom giant SoftBank, was unsuccessful because of lack of support and unwillingness of investors to support the deal.

But, some reports say that political barriers are a major reason for the collapse of such partnerships. The takeover of Akzo, a Dutch company by an American company was not exactly supported by the Dutch political establishment. Politics is a major reason for such disastrous failures.

According to Thomson Reuters data, the run of failures in the pursuit of audacious mega-mergers have been growing with time (Edition.cnn.com, 2017).

What is the key factor that makes up a successful integration?

In the M&A world, the most often asked question is that why do acquisitions go wrong? Why do fewer deals succeed than the one that fail? I think some really essential factors that must be take into account, are ignored by the deal executives. One of the most important one being: Culture. The culture of a company represents not only its people, but also the success of the company. When we buy a company and transform its culture completely, we are actually disrupting the company’s success and ongoing operations.

The due diligence process is very important from this perspective and the buyers, while investigating and verifying the company they intend to buy, must take into consideration the company’s culture and its people (Jacobsen, 2017).

Acquirers, generally are enamored by the ability to gain the associated technology and information, and they tend to forget the more fundamental issue, that is, the personality of a business. The essence here is that, long-term profits of a company depend on the people of the company, rather than the data and the numbers that determine only the short-term success.

The crux is that when the cultures of two companies merge well, value gets created. Objectives, strategies and implementation are all derivatives but the battle can be won on the grounds of the cultural integration (Forbes, 2015).

Is there really a thing such as merger of equals?

This is another question that is generally debatable in the M&A world. Equals implying companies of a similar size combine, with neither a buyer nor a target . As stated by the chief executive of the strategic communications firm Sard Verbinnen, George Sard, “Mergers of equals have long been among the most challenging deals from a communications perspective, because of the internal politics involved and because nobody believes there really is such a thing.” (Forbes, 2014).

I think the corporate culture is the the root cause of any merger’s failure or success. The due diligence process should involve clear choices about the behaviours, relationships, attitudes, values and environment of the combined entity. Not all factors in a merger/acquisition are controllable. I strongly believe a great, synergized culture can definitely help protect a company against bumps and bruises.

With digitization at the heart of our economy, the financial technology revolution is transforming the country’s financial services sector. Over a period of time, India has transitioned into a dynamic ecosystem offering a platform to the FinTech startups of the country to grow into billion dollar unicorns. These FinTech startups are pursuing multiple aspirations by exploiting the potential in a traditionally cash driven economy. From lending to wallets to insurance, FinTech has redefined the way in consumers carry out routine transactions and how businesses work. One of these transitions is the mobile wallet or e-wallet. E-wallets are actually becoming a mainstream concept with the best banks in the country building on it. This transition of mobile wallets from a tech and startup play to the mainstream play will be beneficial for the consumers because of the availability of choice, thus proving to be an advantageous move in the age of digitization.

As per RBI guidelines, a payment bank is a new concept that can only take deposits upto ₹1 lakh per customer but cannot issue loans or credit cards. These banks can issue ATM cards, debit cards as well as offer net-banking and mobile-banking.

After Airtel and India Post Payments Bank, Paytm, has now joined the league. May 24, 2017 marks the opening of its first physical branch in Noida, with another rollout expected after three months. It plans to have a five-member board and a physical presence with 31 branches and 3,000 customer service points in the first year. The aim is to build a strong banking network across the nation with an investment of approximately Rs400 crore over the next two years. The distinguishing factor of this bank will be the zero balance-zero digital transaction charge accounts. Another main highlight of the company is the interest rate on savings account, which will be 4% per annum, much lower than competitor Airtel Payment Bank’s 7.2%. Paytm, the largest mobile wallet app, has been one of the biggest contributors towards the digitization of traditional banking (The Economic Times, 2017).

Are payment banks threat or allies to regular banks?

With India being at the cusp of a Financial Technology revolution, the question is about the threat posed to the existing banks in the nation. Raghuram Rajan, the former RBI governor, said that they could be allies in helping the nation to reach out the banking infrastructure to remote areas where there can be no branches.

There have been a lot of contradictory reviews on this issue. The SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya spoke about how these payment banks can intensify competition and eat into the margins of regular banks. The HDFC Bank chief Aditya Puri who held different views said that, “I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for the wallets to have a future,”, the rivalry between e-wallets and banks is expected to continue for long and the validity of wallets as an economic proposition is doubtful (Businesstoday.in, 2017).

I believe, the increasing market share of these payment banks should not be underestimated. I think the intention of the new payment banks is not only to serve inaccessible rural customers through mobile banking. They are bound to use their perks of having a provision for low-cost deposits in urban areas as well. As far as the urban customers are concerned, there is real competitive threat.

Also, the baseline of these payment banks is technology, hence they will maximise their customer reach through technology, minimising the need for branches, therefore leading to lower cost structure in comparison to universal banks. Hence, I think public sector banks are bound to have excessive manpower and a kitty of bad loans, burdening them with excessive costs as compared to payment banks. Thus, the possibility of a direct threat to nationalised banks should not be ignored.

On the contrary, I feel the issue of payment bank licensing aligns with RBI’s mandate to waive off the unified banking licenses. With more than half the nation being unbanked even after more than 68 years of independence,the success of these payment banks will definitely revolutionise the Indian banking system and therefore, augment the overall growth of our nation.

Flipkart, India’s largest online retailer, has been on an onset of a flurry of deals, trying to counter the global tech giant Amazon. Post acquisitions of China’s Tencent, eBay India and Microsoft’s exclusive public cloud platform, Azure, in a Rs 9,000-crore ($1.4-billion) deal, Flipkart has set stage for a merger with Snapdeal, that is yet to be finalised in the coming weeks. A potential Flipkart-Snapdeal merger/acquisition is an attempt to help Flipkart reach the No.1 status among Indian e-tailers.

Having had a history of making prolific acquisitions of rivals such as Myntra, Jabong and now eBay, its eye is on another Indian tech company in order to disrupt the traditional market. The success of this deal will mark the biggest acquisition in Indian e-commerce and reshape India’s online retail landscape. Flipkart, has roped in Goldman Sachs as an advisor to this proposed deal along with Credit Suisse, which has been mandated by Snapdeal, in order to come up with the final terms and conditions for this transaction.

Why Snapdeal?

A major reason for this proposed deal between these two Indian e-commerce giants, is to attract SoftBank, the largest stakeholder in the online marketplace, which will possibly invest up to $1.5 billion in Flipkart post this deal. It will definitely prove to be a landmark deal for Flipkart leading to transformation of India’s ecommerce landscape.

As stated by Rutvik Doshi, director at the India arm of Inventus Capital Partners, “A Snapdeal acquisition helps consolidate the ecommerce market and get SoftBank as an investor.” Flipkart has made records by making acquisitions and increasing its competitors in the global markets. To begin with, Tencent versus Alibaba, Microsoft against Amazon Web Services and now eBay versus Amazon.

India’s online sellers have been bleeding due to huge marketing expenses and aggressive discounts. Neither Flipkart nor Snapdeal have ever registered profits, even though they were founded almost a decade ago. At present, these e-commerce retail giants, who are actually the biggest names in the Indian market, face a fund crunch due to huge marketing expenses and aggressive discounts. In almost a decade, they have done a phenomenal job of bringing a conservative Indian customer to shop online. But, in this process of shaping the online presence of Indians in the e-commerce sector, they have barely been able to make profits and hence, questioned by investors.

A merger between these two might be a win-win situation for both the Indian retailers because it can help cool down the marketing frenzy and contribute to a lot of other factors such as:

Market Share – India has become a hub for online retail and offers massive opportunity. As suggested by reports, its current valuation of Rs 1.44 lakh crore is still nascent and is expected to grow over 40% each year. A report by the Boston Consulting Group and The Indus Entrepreneurs states, that by 2020, with increase in usage of some 550 million Indian cellphone users and high-speed mobile internet, the size of our internet economy (including online retail) will probably double to $250 billion.

Funding – The funding crunch has been a major problem for these retail giants. But in the previous year, Flipkart has managed to fetch $1.4 billion in a single round. With the onset of this deal, the cash crunch of Snapdeal could be compensated by the finances of Flipkart.

Popularity – With Jabong and Myntra, being part of Flipkart, it has been more popular than Snapdeal among Indian mobile-only customers. A consolidation of these two, might create an Indian e-commerce giant that could give tough competition to the top selling app, Amazon (The Economic Times, 2017).

The main question that strikes me here is that, What should be the basis of a successful merger : Operational synergies between the two companies or consolidation of investor interests?

It is essential for Flipkart to strike the right deal after its latest round of funding. Post-merger, the strategic investor SoftBank, will become a significant shareholder in India’s largest e-commerce company by making an investment of up to $1.5 billion.

It is expected that SoftBank will not only infuse fresh funds into the company, but also buy shares from Flipkart’s largest shareholder, Tiger Global, the New York-based investor.

In order to help revive Snapdeal and its 3,000 employees, this deal is one of the best options for Snapdeal. With an intention to create a strong market position in India and compete with the international e-tailer Amazon, this deal is likely to be a strong proposition for Flipkart as well. Snapdeal enjoys a strong online presence in the north, hence this deal could add a 100 million users to Flipkart’s customer bank. It will also get access to Snapdeal’s small and big warehouses, especially in Northern India. Snapdeal also has exclusive partnerships with global brands which will be an added advantage for Flipkart in diversifying its fashion portfolio. Hence, this merger is likely to strengthen the supply chain of Flipkart and build its financial muscle in India (Businesstoday.in, 2017).

I believe, a merger between these two is a logical strategy for both the companies to take on the international rival Amazon. I think the focus here should be to consolidate and attract strong investments and maintain a strong presence in the Indian e-commerce sector rather than the short-term goal of making immediate profits.

State Bank of India, India’s largest lender joined the global league of top 50 banks with the announcement of a merger of the PSU banks of SBI from April 1,2017. The deal comprises of five associate banks, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Travancore and the Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) combined into one entity within the next quarter. Post-merger, the bank will function as a unified entity with a deposit base of more than Rs 26 lakh crore and advances of Rs 18.50 lakh crore.

With an intention to expand the provision of services across the country, Arundhati Bhattacharya has been talking about the benefits of this huge merger. She said, “The combined entity will enhance the productivity, mitigate geographical risks, increase operational efficiency and drive synergies across multiple dimensions while ensuring increased levels of customer delight.”

This deal has its pros and cons and will massively impact the banking sector in India. The asset base of the bank is expected to expand to Rs. 37 trillion (Rs. 37 lakh crore) with 22,500 branches and 58,000 ATMs across the country. It will become the largest Indian bank with over 50 crore customers (The Economic Times, 2017).

What is the problem this proposed merger is purporting to solve?

The main intention behind this deal proposition is enhancement of the capital base and the rationalisation of the bank. Post this deal, 1,500 branches will be shut because of duplication and will be rationalised. I think this will definitely lead to better utilisation of resources and substantial cost saving.

Further, the integration of resources of the associate banks with SBI will help in cost saving and drive synergies across multiple dimensions.

As stated by Arundhati Bhattacharya, the major benefits of the deal will definitely be felt by the borrowers. The parent SBI plans to lower interest rates on home, car and personal loans to thousands of customers migrating from the associate banks and also make other additional provisions for them.

Is this merger mania a well thought out solution to the banks’ problems?

However, this mega-deal brings a lot of unexpected jitters in the structure of the bank, especially for the employees of SBI.

The deal is expected to have integration of over 70,000 employees having an immediate negative impact on the pension liability provisions of these employees due to varied employee benefit structures.

The promotion prospects of the employees could be hampered due to overlapping of the branches.

Relocation of existing employees due to rationalisation of branches can possibly lead to disturbances for the workforce.

The deal does not take into account the effect on the stakeholders of the bank, hence driving fears of staff retrenchments and fewer career progression opportunities for the employees.

The unions also fear erosion of their power as an effect of this new merger mania.

But, the main problem with this decision is lack of a well-devised structural plan on behalf of the government. The associate banks have a different footing due to their respective regional flavour and focus.

When it comes to merging public sector undertakings, the Centre does not have a good track record. For example, the merger between Air India and Indian Airlines was not very smooth.

Previously, the government holds a bad record in the merger process of PSUs, Air India and Indian Airlines. The results of this deal haven’t been very fruitful till date. In addition, even internationally, the fate of large global banks has also not been successful during the global financial crisis or emergency situations in the world. But, small banks that focus on niche areas have generally survived the crisis. Therefore, the argument the future of a bank is determined by its size is facile even in a global scenario.

Hence, the question here is that will this deal bring long-term synergy benefits or is just another superficial whim of the government.

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With technology evolving at a fast pace, driverless cars, that seemed to be only a possibility few years ago, have become a reality today, accompanied by the expectation of a bright future. In my previous post, we talked about digital M&A deals and how they are shaping the world of M&A. Recently, one of the biggest tech acquisitions of 2017 has come into light. Intel announced the biggest deal of the driverless car industry on March 13, 2017. This American chip giant, has confirmed its decision to buy the Israeli driverless tech firm Mobileye for $15.3 billion.

Lately, with the onset of increasing digital acquisitions in the tech industry, a lot of technology companies are trying to outsmart carmakers by developing the brains of these future vehicles. Hence, the market has become increasingly competitive as a lot of new startups are also making attempts to enter the world of auto-tech.

In the sector of autonomous driving, this $63.54 per share cash deal is the biggest purchase till date. The EyeQ software of Mobileye is used by most of the world’s carmakers, helping vehicles with lane driving and emergency brakes, which is a must have for autonomous vehicles. This system, which is currently fitted in over 15m vehicles but is set to be used by many millions more, can also collect information from installed cameras to continuously update the incredibly detailed maps that self-driving cars will require. As quoted by the Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich, this acquisition is akin to merging the “eyes of the autonomous car with the intelligent brain that actually drives the car.”

Both these companies are already in terms of collaboration with the German automaker BMW bringing a fleet of 40 self-driving test vehicles in the second half of this year. The acquisition of NXP, the largest automotive chip supplier by Qualcomm in October last year, has definitely had an impact on chipmakers. The Qualcomm-NXP deal has led to this new trend and is attracting a lot of attention by most companies, leading to entry of companies like Intel and NVIDIA in the market of autonomous driving components (ETAuto.com, 2017).

Intel will have to go a long way to come close to Nvidia in the autonomous car market because it goes beyond hardware and delivers a complete solution packed with hardware, software, and sensors to develop a fully autonomous car platform. Previously, we saw that Intel’s (INTC) acquisition of Mobileye (MBLY) could be a long shot when it comes to future growth opportunities in autonomous driving.

There has been a lot of discussion about this acquisition, especially after the stocks saw a downfall of 2.0% post the merger announcement. After missing out on the mobile revolution, Intel is now trying to catch up, investing in new areas such as autonomous cars and artificial intelligence.

According to Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein, Intel’s revenues of $4.0 billion from M&A’s have been way less than its expenditure of $30.0 billion in the past few years. Their latest move in its catch-up game is the acquisition of Mobileye (MBLY). The success of this acquisition is dependant on the integration of these two companies and the synergies of this deal. With a history of failures in M&As by Intel, the success of this Mobileye merger is already under suspicion by analysts. Hence, Intel is integrating its Automated Driving Group with Mobileye in order to mitigate the integration risk.

M&A deals in the driverless industry

In the previous year, a number of tech companies, have been active in partnerships, acquisitions, and ventures in the driverless market. Some of the large tech companies have also worked on self-driving programs.

General Motors is one of the best examples for being the most active by making more than 15 acquisitions since 2011, with Cruise Automation being the latest one.

Ford is a good example with acquisitions of automotive application maker Livio, machine learning company SAIPS and shuttle transit service Chariot. The company has been making huge investments in private companies working on cloud softwares, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and mobile car rental technologies.

Uber’s acquisition of the self-driving truck maker Otto for $680.0 million is also a recent example of the such M&A deals in the driverless industry.

Growth opportunities drive acquisitions in automotive market

A lot of analysts have been less enthusiastic about this deal and Intel’s diversification move. There has been news about the price of this acquisition being too high and how it will be another failure in Intel’s M&A history. I feel that Intel will benefit a lot from this move, especially after lagging behind in the transition in the mobile sector. Its entry into the driverless industry will be a lucrative deal for this tech giant. Mobileye, with Intel’s resources, will be able to scale up its hardware and software systems. Secondly, as part of this deal, Intel’s automotive team will move to Israel to work under the company’s CEO Ziv Aviram and CTO Amnon Sashua. Intel has a base in Israel with 10,000 employees and hence, understands the culture of the country. Also, only by absorbing Intel’s automotive team, Mobileye can continue to work directly with its many partners. Hence, for Mobileye, it is simple access to greater resources (Reuters, 2017).

Leaving the price aside, I think this deal will be beneficial to both companies with the chances of this merger going high. The collaboration of the camera and mapping expertise of Mobileye with the chip and computing skills of Intel makes absolute sense for Intel to profitably survive in this sector. Hence, Mobileye will definitely provide a value addition to the company, not only as a source of data, but in the revenues and profits as well.

Therefore, Intel and Mobileye, together are set to become very powerful and large in the car-tech industry.

We are no longer an economy of products and services. As technology gains momentum, digitization is transforming the world. Companies are investing in acquisitions to embrace the digital change. Today, let’s talk about the most upcoming trend that has given a new shape to deals in the global M&A market. Digital disruption has become a new way of M&A deals, which is supposed to be quite unique and very different from traditional M&A.

Digital organisations are ruling the world, be it in terms of market cap, innovation or technology. Hence, in order to grow in this age of networks and platforms, every company must become digital. A new transformation has become necessary for leaving age-old business models and adopting new ones, hence leading to a trend for digital acquisitions. In a recent study by EY, M&A was seen as the most efficient way to acquire digital assets, capabilities and technologies to accelerate growth.

Stock market indices like S&P and Moody’s are now dominated by tech titans Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook. 2016 was a year of blockbuster deals in various industries like healthcare, consumer products, chemicals and others. But, not all deal were a part of the trading desks of Wall Street. Some large traditional companies bought small digital ones setting a new trend for traditional-on-digital deals.

2015 witnessed 48% more digital deals than 2011. This increase has been sourced from various sectors such as automotive, natural resource, and consumer goods companies. Also, traditional companies such as Siemens and General Electric have been the most active digital acquirers of hardware, software, IT service and internet companies. They set records for being the active pursuers in digital M&A.

According to reports by Ocean Tomo, a financial consultancy, 83% of the companies on S&P 500 in 1975, were the ones involving physical or tangible assets. As of early 2015, this number had fallen to a mere 16%. As per the data by Dealogic, digital deals accounted for about 32 percent of all global transactions in 2015 (Bain.com,2017). One of the best examples of this shift is marked by the biggest social media tech giant, FACEBOOK. The value of Facebook’s 1.7 billion monthly active users, is considered to be as valuable an asset as GM’s or GE’s physical assets. Assets (Anon, 2017).

How is new-age digital M&A different from traditional M&A?

Digital acquisitions involve a longer list of target companies accompanied by a higher risk of expected returns, unlike a short list of target companies in non-digital deals.

The shift from physical capital and services to intellectual and network capital represents the shift from traditional acquisitions to digital ones.

The case with digital deals is quite different from traditional deals, that succeed through cost synergies. It is considered better to tread slowly in case of a digital deal.

Some of the mega deals that highlight digital acquisitions happened in the past are mentioned below:

French bank Société Générale bought Fiduceo in 2015, hence expanding into the area of financial account aggregation.

Axel Springer, publisher of Bild, one of Europe’s largest-circulation newspapers and a German media conglomerate, has acquired 25 digital properties in order to increase its presence in online classified ads and social media.

Digital deals have become new enhancement deals for traditional companies. If a company uses similar mechanisms for making digital M&A deals as the conventional ones, it could potentially turn out to be a colossal mistake. Hence, acquirers with less experience in the digital world, face more obstacles in such deals. Therefore, digital M&A poses challenges for companies at every phase.

From the complexity of the identification stage to the tedious valuation stage that involves an appraisal process of the deal, digital deals are a tough call for various traditional companies.

I think the problem arises when traditional companies acquire the digital ones. Interconnecting different technologies as well as being cautious of the walk away price of a deal is important for dealmakers. Deal integration is the most important decision for a traditional-on-digital M&A (Forbes, 2017).

The main crux is that before an offer is made for such a deal, all professionals of the acquiring company, including information technology, human resources and line managers must be an essential part of the deal-integration plan and its implementation.

For successful deals in such a complex structure, companies should opt for the post-deal operating model that works best for them, depending on their identity and the unique circumstances of the acquired asset.

In order to compete in the virtual and non-material world, characterized by virtual reality and augmented reality, it has become important for organisations to adapt to the digital change. In the present scenario, I feel every company needs to become a digital firm leveraging intangibles, virtual networks and technology platforms.